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the lack of elegance...

Posted by: Chazwaza 08:05 pm EDT 09/11/14
In reply to: re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - AlanScott 03:01 pm EDT 09/11/14

I'm not quite sure what you (and some others) are referring to about the elegance that the show wants to have but never quite does. What about it is inelegant? Where does it seem like it might be elegant or wants us to think it is, but it really isn't? And what is an example of something like this that DOES achieve elegance? Because to my ears, the show does achieve elegance very much so. It's also a sex farce to a degree so there's only so much it can do in that sense... but I'm not sure I can think of a more elegant musical actually.


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re: the lack of elegance...

Posted by: AlanScott 03:53 pm EDT 09/12/14
In reply to: the lack of elegance... - Chazwaza 08:05 pm EDT 09/11/14

I started writing an answer for you last night, and perhaps I'll finish it and post it later, but there's just so much. I would agree with the two examples cited by LegitOnce. Since one of those is in the first scene, and I was starting with the first scene, it was in the post I started (but didn't finish) writing last night.

For something similar that is much better written, you can look to the play that they originally wanted to adapt for their waltz musical set at a country house, Ring Round the Moon, adapted and translated by Christopher Fry from Anouilh's Invitation to the Chateau.


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re: the lack of elegance...

Posted by: LegitOnce 01:27 am EDT 09/12/14
In reply to: the lack of elegance... - Chazwaza 08:05 pm EDT 09/11/14

Desiree: "A dragoon. A very handsome, very married dragoon with, I'm afraid, the vanity of a
peacock, and the brain of a pea, but the physical proportions…"

Fredrik: "Don’t specify the vegetable, please."

That is, quite simply, a dick joke. Not a clever dick joke or an original dick joke, just a plain ordinary bad 1960s drag show dick joke.

Don't get me wrong, I love dick jokes, and I think you could even work a dick joke into A Little Night Music in an elegant and witty manner. This, though, isn't that dick joke.

"Don't squeeze your bosoms against the chair, dear! It'll stunt their growth, and then where would you be?" isn't much better. It's a very ordinary sniggering bazoom joke, and ungrammatical besides.


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